This invention relates to protective devices and to backpacks and to load-bearing body armor and shielding.
The world has become a place where our children are no longer safe at their schools. It is now not a question of whether gun violence will occur at our children""s schools but a presumption that that it will and a question of what is to be done about it. For many schools, students cannot attend gym class or wood shop without first passing through a metal detector. Given all the security measures employed in most schools throughout the world, students and parents still remain in a state of unrest at the possibility of gun violence.
Solving the problem of gun violence and for all needless violence for that matter must start within the home, with parents showing their children love, understanding, compassion and attention, and instilling into their children lasting values and the virtue of respecting others. Outside of this, there is little available for helping children protect themselves against the threat of gun violence other than more violence.
Given that many students use backpacks to transport their books and personal effects to and from school, there is a need for an improved backpack having attached load-bearing armor that is movable between stored and deployed conditions for providing ballistic protection for the majority of the upper torso including the belly and chest.
The above problems and others are at least partially solved and the above purposes and others realized in new and improved apparatus comprising a backpack engagable so as to be worn and an attached covering having load-bearing armor. The covering is mounted for reciprocal movement between a stored condition of the armor toward the backpack and a deployed condition of the armor away from and opposing the backpack. The backpack includes a substantial body shell having upper and lower extremities and opposing side extremities and opposing shoulder straps having upper ends attached proximate the upper extremity of the shell and lower ends attached proximate the lower extremity of the shell. The covering may further be mounted for movement between the stored and deployed conditions of the armor in opposition to the upper extremity of the shell or in opposition to one of the side extremities of the shell. The backpack is preferably equipped with a fixed load bearing base for providing dedicated ballistic protection for a wearer""s back when the backpack is worn. The covering may be mounted to this base for reciprocal movement if so desired.
Consistent with the foregoing, the invention also contemplates associated methods.